BENGALURU: A state university can have a maximum of three bank accounts. However, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has accounts in almost all the bank branches in Belagavi. This came to light after an internal audit was conducted by the university authorities for the last eight years. According to official sources, the audit is still ongoing.
VTU finance officer Sapna said, “Even we were shocked to know that the accounts of the university were in almost all the banks functioning at Belagavi.”According to officials, there were at least 10 accounts in different banks, which include cooperative, nationalised and private banks.
“The first thing we did was to close down all such accounts and transfer the money to an account maintained at one nationalised bank,” a senior varsity official said. The university is planning to file complaints against some of these banks that failed to alert the varsity about these transactions.
Visvesvaraya Technological University vice-chancellor Prof Karisiddappa said, “We have suspended six of our employees for misusing university funds. People had withdrawn cash from university accounts and used it without the knowledge of the university.”
Karisiddappa confirmed that they will file a police complaint against the banks. “The amount withdrawn by the employees was around Rs 2.5 crore. The banks did not even intimate the authorities concerned. We have decided to file police complaints against the banks,” he said.
Meanwhile, the officials said this happened when Dr H Maheshappa was the vice chancellor. The authorities also decided to submit a detailed report on financial misappropriations to the Governor after the completion of the internal audit.